After fine-tuning her approach to the cycling season following a difficult few opening months to 2021 Sophie Wright is looking forward to helping her team, the newly rebranded UAE Team ADQ, achieve success.
During the offseason, she relocated since her hometown of Norfolk "is very flat, and cold in the winter. I thought I'd take myself off to Cyprus for the whole winter so I've had a really great winter of training in Cyprus," she said.
Wright's first season at what was then called Alé BTC Ljubljana was hampered first by racing cyclo-cross during the off season and then by the global events that buffeted 2021.
"Last year I raced cyclo-cross in the winter in Belgium," she said. "Despite being a great experience, it just wasn't the best preparation for me for racing on the road. I would like to do it again but for me this year, I really wanted to fully commit to road and give myself the best chance of succeeding in the 2022 season."
"We had the issues with COVID, quarantining issues so I didn't have the best season to be honest," she continued. "There was also Brexit, I applied for Spanish residency twice and got declined twice. I wasted a load of money and time and effort and mental stress, it was mentally draining that whole process.
"That was in the spring so I had this fatigue in the spring races and then it was probably June time when I started getting a bit better. By the end of the season, I was almost peaking but there were no races there. So my season was a bit all over the place really."
Wright began her career in mountain biking and it was in this discipline that she found early success, becoming the Junior European and National Mountain Bike Champion, a World Cup winner, as well as Junior National Cyclocross Champion.
Translating this success to the road with a bronze medal in the junior road race at the European Championships in 2016, she later signed for Alé BTC Ljubljana in 2020.
Although the team's license has been acquired by UAE Team Emirates, its structures have remained broadly the same.
"Because it's been a takeover, a lot of the riders and staff have remained," Wright said, "pretty much all of us know each other well; we've got some new staff, new riders. It's been really good. I'm currently on the training camp in Spain, we've had meetings with our sponsors, we've got our new kit which is amazing, new bikes, amazing weather and good vibes."
Looking ahead to the upcoming season, Wright hopes to fulfil her duties as a domestique for riders such as Mavi García.
"My goal is to perform my job as well as possible in the races," she said, "I would love to be selected for the first ever women's Tour de France, and also the World Championships in Australia – that would be really cool.
"I just hope to perform my job to allow the team to achieve success. Along the way, if I can get my own success, that would be really great. I would be super happy with that."
